Arts & Sciences

Pliable, durable and lightweight, aluminum is the most abundant metal in the earth’s crust, used to make everything from soda cans to airplane wings to electrical transmission lines. Yet even this most versatile of elements is put to the test by The Aluminum Show, the international sensation coming to Edison Theatre April 30. Aluminum is puffed into pillows, shot out of cannons, sewn into costumes, wrapped around audience members and transformed into living creatures of astonishing warmth and complexity.

That FOX Broadcasting Company has a conservative slant and MSNBC skews liberal may reflect widespread opinion, but a Washington University in St. Louis study suggests that news networks’ biases can be measured. Published in March 2011 in the journal Behavioral Research Methods, the findings are important in their validation of a new research tool developed by Washington University psychologists, according to lead author Nicholas Holtzman, a graduate student in psychology in Arts & Sciences at the university.

The role of food, and of meals shared and meals denied in the struggle for American citizenship, will be the topic of Rafia Zafar’s Phi Beta Kappa Lecture at 4 p.m. Wednesday, April 20, in Lab Sciences, Room 300. This Assembly Series event, the final one for this academic year, is free and open to the public.

This year, the Spector Prize was shared by two recipients: Adeetee Bhide and Matthew Leach. Bhide and Leach were nominated by their research mentors for their outstanding work in research and the substantial contributions they made to their field of work.

From literature, philosophy and ethics to history, law and musicology, the humanities are central to our understanding of ourselves, our communities and the larger world around us. On Wednesday, April 27, the Center for the Humanities in Arts & Sciences will present talks by Richard J. Franke, founder of the Chicago Humanities Festival, and Geoffrey Galt Harpham, president and director of the National Humanities Center, as part of “Celebrating the Humanities Day.”

The Washington University Bouchet Honor Society Selection Committee chose its fifth class of Bouchet Fellows. The 2011 Bouchet Fellows are Pascale Guiton, a doctoral student in the Molecular Microbiology and Microbial Pathogenesis Program in the Division of Biology and Biomedical Sciences, and Natecia Williams, a doctoral student in the Neuroscience Program in the Division of Biology and Biomedical Sciences.

The Department of Mathematics in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis has announced the results of two competitions, the national William Lowell Putnam Mathematics Competition and the Missouri Collegiate Math Competition. The WUSTL team placed 19th out of  442 teams from 546 colleges and universities in the Putnam, and two teams finished first and third in the state contest.

Between them, Dan Presgrave, conductor of the Washington University Symphony Orchestra, and John Stewart, director of the Washington University Concert Choir, have taught in the Department of Music in Arts & Sciences for a combined total of almost 60 years. On April 17, the pair — both of whom are retiring at the end of the semester — will join forces one last time for the 2011 Chancellor’s Concert. 

WUSTL physics professors will explore “Nobel Laureates Whom We Have Known: Scientists and Citizens” during the 2011 Saturday Science seminar series. The 2011 Saturday Science seminar series — sponsored by the Department of Physics and University College, both in Arts & Sciences — begins Saturday, April 16. The lectures are free and tailored for the general public.

For his dissertation Brad Oberle delved into the post-Pleistocene history of two rare species of shootingstars (Dodecatheon), thinking that their response to post-glacial warming might provide clues to the response of plants to global warming. He found that one rare species was a glacial relict that had gradually retreated to a refuge habitat near limestone cliffs. The second rare species was not a species at all but instead an ecotype, or variant, of a widespread species that had adapted to the cooler cliff habitat. The glacial relict is the species most at risk as the climate warms.